Saturday 25 April 2015

Samples 2015: Week 16, Cave Art

Free machine embroidery on felted wool blanket. I used the embellisher to add streaks of ochre and white wool tops to the fabric before stitching, and then more afterwards to blend the “drawings” into the background. Burmilana and cotton threads gave me thick and thin lines. Finally the roughly cut edges were distressed with the embellisher.     

Source picture
“Prehistoric Ardèche cave art brought to life in €55m replica. France is opening up the oldest art gallery in the world – although the Caverne du Pont d’Arc is a meticulously conceived replica of the nearby cave and its 36,000-year-old paintings.”
Perfect fake … artists used techniques from the paleolithic era to recreate the Caverne du Pont d’Arc in the Ardèche. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA
Sample design
This isn’t a specific section of the cave wall. I copied a few manageable-looking animals and partial drawings into my own arrangement. As usual the aim isn’t accurate reproduction – my challenge here was to make my embroidered sketches blend into the “rock” so that they didn’t resemble stitching at all. I’m quite pleased with how that worked, the technique might even some potential!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This works so well! Particularly love the aurochs, top right. :o)

Iz said...

Yes, you really have successfully blended the stitch into the background rock. I love primitive art and rock paintings.

Beverley said...

Absolutely more of this. Caught the essence perfectly.